She’s a liar.
She’s a dirty, fucking, filthy, drug-addicted liar.
And she deserves to rot for what she did.
Chapter Twenty
Demi
“The first twenty-four hours will be the most critical.” Brooks’s doctor stands at the foot of his bed, along with an anesthesiologist. Brenda’s on Brooks’s right, and I take his left.
Mom is in the corner, and Dad, Derek, Delilah, and Haven are in the waiting room. They’re planning to rotate in and out since there can only be three of us in here at a time. They all want to be here, waiting for the moment he finally opens his eyes.
Brenda threads her hand through her son’s as a nurse tends to his IV drip.
“We’ll begin by reducing his sedation, little by little,” the doctor explains. “Our tests have indicated that his swelling is subsiding, and the EEGs have all shown promise.”
I watch his nurse move quickly, switching bags and injecting something into a port with a syringe. She doesn’t flinch, like this is second nature to bring people back to life like this. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t have someone’s life in my hands like this.
“It’s not uncommon,” the anesthesiologist says, “for this to take several attempts. Don’t be alarmed if he doesn’t wake up our first try. We always hope they wake up the first time, but sometimes they don’t. We take that as a sign that the brain’s not ready, and in that case, we would put him back under using the same barbiturate cocktail.”
“So what are you doing now? How does this work?” Brenda squeezes Brooks’s hand.
“We’re reducing his sedation, little by little,” his doctor says. “We want to avoid a quick withdrawal. So for now, we reduce and we observe. We’ll be looking for signs, and he’ll be monitored around the clock.”
“Do we know how much brain damage we’re looking at?” Brenda asks her question like she’s asking about the weather. Her ability to keep it all together and stay so calm never ceases to amaze me.
“We won’t know until he wakes up.” Brooks’s doctor sticks a pen in his front breast pocket before folding his hands across his hips. “Once he wakes, we’ll run a few simple tests and ask a few questions. If he’s aware of his surroundings, that’s a good sign. If he’s able to say hello, recognize faces, and remember names, that’s even better. We just won’t know until the time comes. Given the extent of the trauma, we’re expecting to see some lasting effects of his brain injury. We just don’t have a way to predict that at this time.”
Brenda clenches her heart. “Thank you, doctors.”
The white coats leave and the nurse stays, recording his vitals and silently monitoring the process.
I adjust my coat over the back of my chair and bunch it up to provide a makeshift pillow. I need to get comfortable, because this is going to be a long night.
Brenda hasn’t said more than a few words to me since I got here. From across Brooks’s bed, I feel her staring, but I don’t engage.
“How’re you doing over there, Mom?” I ask.
My mom smiles and checks her watch. “I’m about to head out and let Derek come in. He’s going to stay for a while, and then he needs to get Haven home to bed.”
I turn back toward Brooks. He’s less swollen than he was earlier today. Every hour that passes makes him look more like his old self.
The credit card statements are still scattered on our kitchen floor. I should’ve looked at them to see all the things he was buying, but at the time, I was too busy adding up all the five-figure balances to care.
His gifts to me were usually modest. Thoughtful little trinkets, nothing major. Definitely not six figures’ worth. I bet he was charging things for his mistress. Expensive lingerie. Jewelry. Cliché little things to make her feel like she’s the special one.
I don’t know what twenty-eight-year-old man needs a mistress anyway. It’s not like I was forcing him to marry me. Maybe it wasn’t so much about her as it was about the rush he got from his dirty little secret.
Men and their fucking secrets.
Brenda stares at my hands, and I suddenly realize I’m ripping a piece of Kleenex to shreds.
“Nervous, sweetheart?” she asks. Her endearment calms me and gives me hope that maybe she isn’t on to me. Maybe she’s not well on her way to hating me—yet. “He’s going to be fine. He’s going to wake up. I just know it. I ran into Sister Sapphire outside Greenberg’s Deli yesterday, and she told me she had a vision about Brooks, and he’s going to be just fine.”